Official fired over police shooting Facebook posts sues city

Updated 6:08 pm, Monday, February 12, 2018

CLEVELAND (AP) — An emergency medical services captain fired over Facebook posts about a 12-year-old black boy fatally shot by a white police officer is suing the city of Cleveland.

Cleveland.com reports Jamie Marquardt's federal lawsuit filed on Monday says the posts, including one saying Marquardt was glad Tamir Rice was dead, were put on his Facebook account by someone else. Marquardt later deleted the posts.

But the lawsuit says the posts were constitutionally protected speech even though they were posted by someone else, and that Cleveland violated his rights by firing him in 2016.

Tamir was playing with a pellet gun outside a recreation center in 2014 when he was shot by a policeman who thought the weapon was real.